


Lost

by StarGzer



Category: Lancer (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 08:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29186064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarGzer/pseuds/StarGzer
Summary: Murdoch has a premonition. This is a missing scene for the episode entitled "Child of Rock and Sunlight".
Kudos: 2





	Lost

**Author's Note:**

> The synopsis of the episode is as follows: After being stranded in the desert, Scott is found and taken to an abandoned mine by an inquisitive young boy. But the boy's family includes an outlaw uncle who plans to kill Scott and pass the body off as his own. This scene takes up when Murdoch and Johnny arrive at the hotel and discover Scott hasn't arrived but is due on the stage from Tonopah in the morning. Hope you enjoy.

Murdoch had lost track of how long they'd been sitting there. It felt like it might have been a long time when he brushed the sand from his fingers on his trousers and pointed to the burst of stagecoach dust on the horizon.

"Is that coach coming or leaving?"

Scott picked up a palm full of sand and let it dribble between his fingers. He sighed, just a soft huff of breath, and looked up across the distance, squinting.

"I have no idea." He sniffed, pulled on his lower lip. "Is there someplace you have to go, Sir?"

Murdoch wasn't sure. He scratched the hair near his temple. "No, I don't think so."

He looked up and down the arroyo. The dry creek bed would become wet—and suddenly dangerous—in the spring with run-off. It seemed to go forever, but Murdoch knew that it couldn't. It would end somewhere. Perhaps in a town. Or a city. Maybe all the way to Tonopah.

"Where are we?" Murdoch asked suddenly and got a surprised laugh out of Scott, the shoulders of his checked brown shirt shaking.

"What's so funny?" Murdoch demanded. But he turned his own hesitant lips skyward because it felt good to have Scott laugh. It seemed like it had been forever since he last heard his son laugh. Something shifted sideways in him. Something known and familiar locked into place, though he’d be hard pressed to name what it was, if he'd been inclined to name it, which he wasn't. Whatever it was, it felt good and easy and had to do with how he'd never been with Scott yet how his son had _always_ been with him. And now? A slightly different configuration, a cut bond re-tied, but secure and _tight_.

Scott kept chuckling. "It's nothing, Sir. Just…it's quite the question, isn't it? After all, what does it matter?"

Murdoch shrugged. He guessed that it didn't matter. Not really. "I thought it was the Tonopah stage."

Scott jabbed a thumb down into the sand. "Well, it's a stage, anyway."

"So it's arriving?"

"I have no idea."

Murdoch was sorry about that and he didn't know why exactly. "I think it's coming," he decided finally.

Scott wagged his head, a grin pulling up one side of his mouth. "Of all people, how do you not know where you're at?"

It seemed to amuse him, and that got Murdoch's back up a little. He wasn't lost _._ There was a difference between not knowing where you were and being _lost._ And he'd stumbled along enough in life to know what was what.

"I thought I did know."

A gust of wind switched directions and beat on him from another angle. Murdoch snatched a lungful of air and steadied himself. The landscape had shifted somehow. No, that wasn't right. It wasn't the landscape, but rather the land. Sand was being pulled up into a bloated wall of frothing dirt. It splashed the clouds with dark, rich, colors of blood-red and orange. When a sky turned that pretty it was even money someone was catching hell someplace else. His father had told him that eons ago when both of their tongues were wrapped in thick brogues.

"Are you going to tell me what you and Johnny are doing in town?" Scott leaned his elbows on his knees, right hand gripping his left wrist between them. He arched an eyebrow, and it made Murdoch hurt.

"Is that what this is about?" Murdoch didn't want it to be an accusation, but it sounded like one, nonetheless.

Scott shrugged, lip curling as if the world in general couldn't bore him more if it tried. "I don't know. Just…tell me what you two are doing."

"The town's limits signs are both on the same post, if that gives you any idea. There's one hotel and, surprisingly, two saloons, although the latter is closed for some sort of repairs. Johnny and I had drinks at the former, but the whiskey was watered down, and the stew was burned." Murdoch couldn't help but laugh. "You wouldn't care for it."

Scott looked irritated just listening. "You're right, Sir. It doesn't sound like something I would like. Better I'm not there."

Murdoch's laugh died away just like the hope did, leaving him empty. It was quick, unexpected.

"I wouldn't say that," he replied.

Scott lifted an index finger and pointed out over the desert to the brown bulkhead of cloud. "There appears to be a storm coming." Then his brow knitted. "Didn't you tell me and Johnny that once?"

Murdoch felt like the sky was folding down on him.

The wind had sucked dust into the atmosphere where it acted as a gritty filter between the sun and the land, causing the light to shine pale and vague.

Murdoch watched the dark cloud dip and swell. Remembered how Scott's name rose and built inside him that same way at the hotel when the desk clerk denied having any knowledge to the whereabouts of his son.

Scott watched a buzzard circle over their heads, its flight erratic and buffeted by wind. He tilted his face back to follow its path.

"How long does a man have to live after those birds show up, uninvited I dare say, to the party? How do they even know?" he asked.

Murdoch's "What?" rode a confused gasp from his lips.

"Is it days? A few hours? Are they harbingers of death…or fate? Maybe destiny?" Scott flapped a hand lazily in front of his face. "Fate or destiny? Is it all the same thing?"

Murdoch twisted on the sand and planted a hand behind him. He watched the buzzard get smaller, and the brown fingers across the sky grow deeper, longer. Perspective slid.

"It makes no difference what you call it, Scott. You make it your own."

Scott winced and sucked in a breath. "You don't think there are circumstances that determine a man's fate?" He tutted at Murdoch, head shaking. "I believe you might be wrong about that."

His son looked out to the horizon where the colossal brown cloud billowed and roiled like smoke as it devoured the arroyo. The lone buzzard rasped and hissed as it flew overhead somewhere. Murdoch felt a thick coil of dread when Scott said it again, almost to himself. "I think you may be wrong on that account, Sir."

There was something so unhurried and calm about his son, Murdoch wanted to grip the front of his shirt, shake and beat his fists against him. After everything that had happened, such blatant disregard for his own life seemed sacrilegious.

As though Scott had learned nothing.

Murdoch though, he could tell you a thing or two about life and how it went. In love and grief. Wrapping an hour into a minute. The silence before the scream. How you can never go back to right the wrongs, no matter how spry or cunning you think you are.

That had been Murdoch's fate. And divined by his own hand, damn it.

Scott palmed the ground beside his hip and rose to his feet with a groan. He looked down at Murdoch, lips pursed, and head cocked to one side, as if he was assessing him. But Murdoch didn't want to be judged, not by his son.

Scott appeared to arrive at some sort of decision and splayed out a hand encouragingly.

"Come on, Murdoch. That's enough. Get up."

o~O~o

Murdoch woke to the silence of the darkened hotel room. His eyes shifted towards the other bed when he heard a slide of cloth, the crunch of a bedspring.

"You all right, Murdoch?"

He nodded, for all Johnny could see in the darkness.

"Scott'll be along today from Tonopah. You just wait and see."

But Murdoch wasn't so sure anymore and thought for a moment he could taste the desert on his lips.

The End


End file.
